Portals and Flyers and Sixers, Oh My

The Philly portal went live Tuesday morning. It’s a 24/7 video stream connecting LOVE Park to “cities, people, and cultures across the world,” in the words of a city executive at the portal’s opening ceremony.

What’s this arts & culture news doing in On Pattison: THE Philly Sports Newsletter, some readers may wonder.

Simple: We believe that Philadelphia’s sports teams are so deeply ingrained in the city’s culture that it’s impossible to separate the two.

Also: It’s our newsletter and we do what we want.

We’ll also discuss last night’s dispiriting Flyers loss and fill you in on the latest Sixers news in advance of tonight’s opener vs. the Bucks.

In the email today:

• ⭕ The Philly Portal is LIVE

• 🤢 Flyers "New Era of Orange" Looks AWFULLY Familiar

• 🪑 Embiid, George Out for Season Opener...for Starters

  • 📆 This Day in Philly Sports History

  • 📊 Poll

  • 🔗 Links

  • 📺 Coming Up

The Philly portal first appeared in LOVE Park on Friday, prompting speculation over the hijinks that may soon ensue. Public nudity, drug use, and other assorted misdeeds temporarily shut down portals in New York City and Dublin in the past.

The live stream connected Philadelphia to Dublin at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, with a hearty “Go Birds!” from the Philly crowd even before the guy with the mic could say “Hello Dublin.”

Early portal installations connected live streams from two cities 24/7. The stream in LOVE Park, however, is expected to rotate through locations such as Dublin and Vilnius every few minutes.

The portal was visibly cracked (like the Liberty Bell!!!) at Tuesday’s opening, but will be repaired soon. While many expect this thing to get the HitchBOT treatment within days, the city says the damage occurred during installation and was not an act of vandalism.

Philadelphia is off to a great start with its new toy, sharing the city’s fine culture with friends around the globe:

And the portal is sure to provide some incredible entertainment before it is sadly and inevitably destroyed.

In the intro to today’s send we alluded to the truth of this newsletter, which is that we do what we want. That spirit will inform our content. You will go with us or you won’t.

As we — only occasionally — pull the curtain back on our process here…do you really think we want to devote headlined sections of this newsletter to Union soccer? Don’t you think it’s a little unusual to make Penn State football a focus when State College is in Pennsyltucky?

We would far prefer to stick to the four majors. Unfortunately, the Phillies’ Red October ended up being a Red Week. We wanted SO BAD to pivot to the Flyers. And, well:

The Flyers are running out of ways to distract a knowledgeable public from this glorified AHL team.

We were distressed when the coach pointed to the schedule as an excuse.

We heard somewhere that respect is earned. This particular iteration of the Orange and Black is the furthest thing from earning respect we have seen in some time.

You want stats? Fine. Last night, the Flyers were outshot 29-18 in their own building. The one bit of good news — five penalty kills out of five — was completely undermined by the Flyers giving up two shorthanded goals in the first period.

Then, in true Flyers fashion as of late, they scored :34 into the third period to give the paying customers a glimmer of hope…and gave up the third Caps goal a minute later.

The Flyers have branded this season as a “New Era of Orange.” But anyone paying close attention can see the truth: Not a lot has changed.

The schedule Torts doesn’t like also doesn’t care about the Flyers’ form. They play the Capitals again tonight in D.C.

It’s getting late early for the Flyers. If they don’t get this figured out soon, get ready to see a lot of Penn State football and Villanova basketball stories in this space.

A Sixers season with championship aspirations will open tonight with $100 million worth of talent hanging out with Nick Nurse in street clothes.

As realists, this news doesn’t come as that great of a shock to us.

Embiid didn’t play in the preseason. Further, every word that has come out of his mouth in recent days says more about the time he needs to take off rather than the time he needs to play.

As for George, we’re about a week out from the Sixers fan base thinking George had blown out his knee in a preseason game. If you offered Sixers fans “PG will miss the opener but he’s not going to miss the season” after that scare, they’d have leapt at it.

That doesn’t mean the news that Embiid and George are out for the opener was well-received. Friends, it was not:

“Bucs?” Never mind.

You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Fans are going to vote with their dollars and with their asses.

Tuesday night’s get-in price for an early-season Flyers game against a nondescript Capitals team was around $35. At the same moment, you could get into OPENING NIGHT for the Sixers for about $20.

In true Sixers fashion, they’re not helping themselves with their branding, either.

If “this” is a line item on the league injury report, then sure.

📆 This Day in Philly Sports History

On October 23, 1993, Joe Carter hit a walk-off home run in the sixth and final game of the ‘93 World Series.

We usually drop a video in this section. But not today, for obvious reasons.

📊 Poll

Results from Tuesday:

🔗 Links

• 🍼 Congratulations to the Laughtons on the birth of their son.

• 🐏 We have no clue how the Eagles can fit Cooper Kupp under the cap but we’d love to see how they do it.

• 🍎 Absolutely, please, we beg you, throw the Mets a parade.

• 🎙️ “PTI” turned 23.

• 🏌️‍♂️If you have $750 to burn, you could spend a day watching the Ryder Cup in New York next year.

📺 Coming Up

Games before our next send.

Wednesday, October 23

• Sixers vs. Bucks, 7:30 p.m. (ESPN)

• Flyers at Capitals, 7:30 p.m. (TNT)

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.

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